I am in the process of upgrading my PC.
XP Pro installed.

I have a good working system currently in use where everything works OK and
want to transfer the hard drives ( there are two physical hard drives ) to a
new motherboard that uses a faster Intel ( as opposed to the current AMD )
processor.

I have done the preliminaries on the old system, including cloning the two
hard drives to two hard drives that have more capacity and all works OK.

Just in case of a catastrophe I have the original C drive on the smaller
hard drive currently off line and disconnected - but it works OK.

I have copied the content of the XP Pro installation disk to a folder on the
new ( C: ) hard drive that will be in use on the new mother board as I
realize all the drivers will need to be loaded for the new motherboard.
There is loads of space spare now on the hard drives I intend to use on the
new mother board setup.

I have done this before, years ago, and I seem to remember that the best
strategy to use when installing the drives on the new mother board is to
initially boot into safe mode and then let the system discover the new
hardware. The system then worked OK.

I have also done it before and had a failure.

What is the best sequence of events to follow to ensure a functioning system
on the new motherboard installation with the old hard drives.

I have so much installed on the working system and so many saved passwords
etc that I really do not want to re-install the whole system on the new
motherboard setup.

Any suggestions welcome.